


Dawn Treader

by spqr



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, Recovery, Sharing a Bed, post-monster, soul searching, Перевод на русский | Translation in Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 06:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18026807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spqr/pseuds/spqr
Summary: Eliot rolls onto his side. The soft light of dawn outlines the curly mess of his hair, and there are rings under his eyes, and somehow rumpled and sleepless he looks more like his old self than he has in the last six months.“I just realized,” he explains, “that I haven’t kissed you properly since we got rid of the monster. And we just laid here all night and barely touched each other, and I...I’ve been negligent.”Tears well in Quentin’s eyes. “You don’t have to,” he tries to say, but it comes out sort of pathetic.Eliot shushes him. “Come here, Q.”





	Dawn Treader

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Покоритель Зари](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18351329) by [Gewi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gewi/pseuds/Gewi)



“What are you reading?”

 

Quentin takes his eyes away from the page. Eliot’s standing in the doorway to the cabin, sleeves of his threadbare sweater pulled down over his hands. The fog coming in off the water is chilly, but not cold enough that Eliot should look like he does--like one of the homeless people Quentin used to buy cups of coffee for in the dead of winter, run through with despair and resignation and stranded in the early stages of hypothermia. 

 

Even though Eliot’s been asleep all morning, Quentin suddenly feels guilty for escaping onto the porch with a book. For feeling like he needed an escape in the first place, for taking time for himself when clearly he should’ve known that this was going to turn out to be one of Eliot’s worse days. 

 

“Q?” Eliot prompts.

 

“Sorry. I, uh,” Quentin puts his thumb in the page. “ _The Voyage on the Dawn Treader,_ it’s--“

 

“Narnia.” Eliot smiles fleetingly. “Tired of Fillory, are we?”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, you could say that.”

 

The screen door creaks as Eliot pushes it open. He settles next to Quentin on the wicker couch and stretches out along it. Quentin holds his book aloft so Eliot can lay down in his lap. “Hi,” he says.

 

“Hi.” Eliot blinks up at him like he’s not quite awake yet. Like he’s somewhere else. “Read to me?”

 

“Of course, uh--yeah.” Quentin opens the book. “From the beginning?”

 

“From wherever you are.”

 

Quentin clears his throat and starts reading. _But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be, only that it lies across a river..._ Eliot is a comfortable weight in his lap, warm, mouth tucked in to Quentin’s stomach through his shirt, and eventually Quentin’s fingers find their way into his hair. It’s greasier than normal--Quentin knows Eliot hasn’t been keeping to his usual hygeine routines, but he doesn’t care, because it’s Eliot. He could be covered in mud and Quentin would still want to wrap himself around him. 

 

It’s nice here, like this. Quentin can almost forget that there’s anything outside this magical pocket world, that out across that misty sea the rest of the universe is still going around and around on the hamster wheel of existential insanity. It feels almost like they’re back in those happy years at the mosaic. 

 

Eliot falls asleep in Quentin’s lap, breathing slow and deep in time with the lapping waves against the bottom porch stair. Quentin stops reading for a moment, transfixed by the feeling of Eliot’s nose pressed just beneath his navel. Then he starts up again, softer and slower than before, because it feels selfish not to.

 

W

 

Not all of Eliot’s bad days are so peaceful.

 

Some days he seems determined to make an argument out of everything, like he’s trying to figure out where Quentin’s breaking points are. Some days he throws mugs and plates against the wall and yells in frustration when the shards magically disappear, swept away by whatever spell keeps them in food and alcohol and clean linens and endless well-loved paperbacks. 

 

Some days Eliot doesn’t get out of bed. Some days he sits in the mess of their unmade bed and stares out the window at the sea that surrounds the cabin on all sides and keeps staring and keeps staring until Quentin can’t take it anymore and yanks the curtains shut, and maybe that’s Quentin’s breaking point. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t matter how many mugs Eliot smashes or how loud he yells, because Quentin couldn’t care less what Eliot does to _him,_ he only cares what Eliot does to himself. 

 

It’s not easy, and Quentin would never do Eliot the indignity of telling him that it is. It’s work--hard work. But Quentin remembers his dad telling him once that falling in love was something that happened to you, and staying in love was something you chose. And it’s the easiest thing in the world to choose Eliot.

 

W

 

They’ve been here...five months, maybe? Six? Quentin never bothered to go looking for a calendar, even though he knows the cabin would provide one if he did. It doesn’t matter how long they’re here--they’re not on a schedule. There’s no deadline on Eliot’s recovery. Quentin would stay here years, if that’s what it took. Decades.

 

When he glances at the row of _Nancy Drew_ books on the shelf or rubs lotion on a patch of dry skin or puts on a particularly soft sweater, he misses Julia, but it’s a mild sort of ache, like he wishes he could hear her voice on the phone or get one of her texts with a row of pink hearts on the end. That’s all.

 

He doesn’t miss the others, not really. Maybe he should feel guilty about that, but he has a lot to feel guilty about nowadays, and _lack_ of negative emotion isn’t high on that list. 

 

It’s to be expected, anyways. Compared to the fifty, sixty years he spent with Eliot at the mosaic, he’s known them for the blink of an eye. Everything with Alice seems like just another one of those ill-advised, ill-suited romances from his teenage years, awkward and fumbling and disconnected. Penny and Kady and Margo and Josh--yeah, they went through some shit together, but Quentin’s not sure that makes them _friends_. It makes them people you can call in a crisis, not people you want to see every day. 

 

W

 

The day dawns as it always does--gray and muted.

 

Like everything else here, it’s designed to be inoffensive and soothing. Quentin’s awake to watch it, all two minutes of it. He’s been awake since it went down last night. They both have--neither of them slept a wink, just laid awake in bed, hands and ankles tangled together under the sheets. Quentin has vague memories of a couple of conversations, but he can’t recall their content, just the murmured cadence of Eliot’s voice. 

 

Neither of them are sick, but this feels like the morning after a fever breaks. After he’s been up all night mopping sweat from Eliot’s forehead, grinding up ginger tea in a mortar, praying to gods he doesn’t believe in. It feels like they’ve come out the other end of something, but Quentin isn’t sure what.

 

Eliot’s staring at the ceiling, but it’s not that empty stare that unsettles Quentin so terribly. He’s thinking about something, something that suddenly makes him laugh.

 

Quentin startles. If he stopped to think about it, it would probably break his heart that the sound of his best friend’s laugh is surprising, but now he just smiles tentatively. “El?”

 

“God,” Eliot says. “This is depressing, isn’t it?”

 

The smile drops off Quentin’s face. “What?”

 

Eliot rolls onto his side. The soft light of the dawn outlines the curly mess of his hair, and there are rings under his eyes, and somehow rumpled and sleepless he looks more like his old self than he has in the last six months. 

 

“I just realized,” he explains, “that I haven’t kissed you properly since you got rid of the monster. And we just laid here all night and barely touched each other, and I...I’ve been negligent.”

 

Tears well in Quentin’s eyes unbidden. “You don’t have to,” he tries to say, but it comes out sort of pathetic.

 

Eliot shushes him. “Come here, Q.”

 

He reels Quentin in. Quentin goes more willingly than he’s ever gone anywhere in his life, already making a soft desperate noise by the time Eliot’s lips find his. And at least this is the same way it’s always been. At least Eliot still kisses like he’s never been more sure of anything, like this is an argument he knows with absolute certainty he’ll win--like he’s making a declaration with every heartbeat.

 

Quentin wraps his arms around Eliot’s middle and presses in close to the heat of his body and tries not to think about how close he came to never having this again, how long it’s been since he’s been held. He’s not as good a kisser, not by a long shot, but Eliot never seems to mind that his declarations are a little less eloquent.

 

They stay in bed until dinner time, when Eliot declares he wants to try to bake a pie and leads the way downstairs with the bedsheets wrapped around him like a toga. He burns the pie horribly, but they open the windows and the house takes care of the smoke all on its own. They watch the sunset that night--inoffensive as it is--bundled naked in the same blanket on the roof of the cabin, sharing warmth.

 

It’s the first time in a long time that Quentin lets himself think _tomorrow things will be better._

 

W

 

Tomorrow, Eliot’s yelling again. 

 

Quentin finds him on the kitchen floor, wrapped protectively around a bottle of peach vodka. He tries to make Eliot get up, and Eliot shoves him away and snaps, “You can’t _fix me_.”

 

It’s exactly the worst thing to say, and Eliot knows it. Quentin can’t help it--for the first time in six months, he snaps back. “I’m not _trying_ to fix you. I’m trying to keep you from drinking yourself to death, asshole--“

 

“Well, don’t fucking bother.” Eliot yanks his arm away. “There’s no coming back from this. I’m done. I’m not anything anymore, I’m still trapped in my own fucking _brain, and_ you’re going to leave anyway, so just _go._ ”

 

“I’m not leaving--“

 

“You’re wasting your fucking life, Q!”

 

Quentin’s face heats. “Fine!” he snaps. “You want me to go? Then _I’ll go_.”

 

“Good! Get the _hell_ out!”

 

Quentin slams the front door behind him and makes it all the way down to the rowboat tied to the bottom of the rail before he hesitates. He _could_ go, is the thing. He could take this boat and row out into the sea and eventually the edges of the pocket universe would fade back into something recognizeable. But there’s only one boat.

 

Eliot _before_ would have fashioned a raft out of the bookcase and set out with pots and pans for paddles. Eliot _now--_ the Eliot who’s making his way noisily up the stairs inside--Quentin’s not sure he’d care enough to feed himself if Quentin weren’t there to cook for him. Quentin’s not sure the house would save him. He’s not willing to find out.

 

He makes his way back inside, and pauses outside the closed bathroom door. “I’m mad at you,” he says, just loud enough to be sure Eliot will hear. “You’re sleeping on the couch.”

 

W

 

Quentin’s been dealing with depression his whole life, which he thinks is long enough to qualify him to say with certainty that that’s _not_ what this is. Eliot’s _not_ depressed. He’s stuck at a crossroads, and has very stubbornly sat himself down and is refusing to choose which way to go. And that’s not to say that he could make a decision today and be back to normal tomorrow, it’s just--he could make a decision today, and tomorrow he could take a shower and put on his old clothes and feel a little bit more like himself, and he could start to heal.

 

But he’s not making that decision. He’s doing everything in his power to _avoid_ making that decision, and it’s--well, it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating, but it’s not Quentin’s job to make that decision for him. It won’t work if Quentin makes that decision for him.

 

Eliot could lean on the _possessed by a bloodthirsty monster_ crutch forever. He could keep them here forever--and it would be _them_ , because the world has taken a lot from Quentin and he’s not about to hand Eliot over willingly. Even if the rest of his life is spent in this pocket universe, he’s going to spend it with the man he loves.

 

W

 

Almost every night, Quentin dreams about the mosaic.

 

It’s a blessing. There are so many other things he could dream about, things mired in blood and grief and pain and desperation and terror. Maybe it’s part of the magic of the house, that he doesn’t have to relive the worst moments of his life. More likely it’s the sound of Eliot breathing beside him. 

 

Either way--when he goes to sleep he gets to go home. He gets to stand from a long day kneeling at the mosaic, knees cracking and arthritic, and fall into Eliot’s arms, let Eliot hold his weight and pull his too-long hair away from his neck and press a kiss to the hinge of his jaw. He gets to sit down in front of the fire, a homemade quilt over both their legs, and listen to Eliot gossip endlessly about a caravan of minstrels that went through their woods yesterday. He gets to feel Eliot’s lips on his shoulder, his chest, his chin.

 

He closes his eyes in a bed where Eliot sleeps an entire foot away from him and gets to return to a place where they’ve spent years weaving a thick fabric of familiarity between them, where every piece of Quentin’s life has Eliot’s fingerprints on it. And if he wakes up aching, missing someone who’s right next to him, then. Well.

 

It’s a good reminder, he thinks, and reaches out to thread his fingers through Eliot’s in the dark. The air's warm under the covers, and Eliot’s chest rises and falls softly in the moonlight. They’re both safe and they’re both alive and they’re together, and Quentin reminds himself that they’ve been through worse than this.

 

W

 

“Who do you think built this place?”

 

Quentin puts down _The Silmarillion_. “I don’t know. Josh just said ‘a friend,’ but knowing him...”

 

“It could be a million different people or a half dozen lesser gods.” 

 

“Yeah.” 

 

Eliot’s on the couch. Quentin leans back against his knees; he’d been enjoying the quiet and the feeling of Eliot’s fingers teasing his hair in to braids, but conversation that doesn’t involve expletives or drunkenness or crying is rare enough to draw his attention. “You don’t think--“

 

“No,” Eliot answers, before Quentin can finish the question. “Doesn’t really feel like Umber, does it?” 

 

“It doesn’t,” Quentin agrees. “But building something like this takes a lot of juice. Do you--um. Do you know any other people that build pocket worlds in their spare time?”

 

“Not off the top of my head,” Eliot says, but he sounds more curious than miffed. “I’m assuming if I wanted to do some research, the cabin will provide the requisite materials?”

 

“Uh--probably, yeah.”

 

“Lovely.” Eliot stands. Quentin thunks back against the couch. 

 

He thinks about following Eliot upstairs to the library, but for some reason it feels like the wrong thing to do. For the first time in a long time, it seems like Eliot might be interested in something of his own volition, he might be motivated to do something other than sit wrapped around Quentin while he reads. It feels to fragile a development to threaten with Quentin’s uncoordinated, awkward presence. 

 

Instead he opens back up _The Silmarillion._

 

He makes it through _Ainulindalë_ and is about to start _Valaquenta_ when he hears the record player scratch to life overhead. Music floats down the stairs, and Eliot’s feet creak on the floorboards, and there’s no way to tell if he’s dancing holding a book like he used to do in the house at Brakebills or if he’s just walking around the room, but Quentin smiles so wide it hurts his face.

 

W

 

It’s not fair to compare this Eliot to the way Eliot was before, even though they’re the same man. 

 

It’s not fair to ask Eliot not to be effected--not to be _changed--_ by his experiences. Not fair to compare the way Eliot makes love to him in the cabin to the way he fucked him the first time they went to bed at Brakebills, not fair to wish his smiles were a little happier, a little wickeder, a little stronger. 

 

They’re false equivalencies, or something. They’re--they have nothing to do with each other, these different Eliots. No one is the same person they were before the worst moment of their life. Quentin’s certainly not the same person he was before he buried Eliot’s body at the mosaic. It would be unfair to ask him to be, when he can still feel the dirt under his fingernails. When he can still feel Eliot’s skin, dead and cold and waxy. 

 

It’s not fair, but Quentin looks at Eliot and he sees it all. 

 

He sees Eliot the first time he met him, suave and confident and like no one Quentin had ever met. He sees Eliot holding him back after Alice died, grim and determined. He sees Eliot being crowned king of Fillory, Eliot crowning him king in return. He sees Eliot in the throne room, Eliot at the mosaic, Eliot at age thirty, fifty, seventy. He sees Eliot when it all came rushing back, Eliot when, idiotically, Quentin told him they should give it a shot. 

 

He sees Eliot standing between him and the monster, refusing with every atom of his being to let Quentin spend the rest of eternity in that prison. He sees Eliot coming back to himself after they finally figured everything out, after they finally got the monster out of him, trapped it back in Blackspire. He sees Eliot--shaky and pale and still terrified--stride across the room in two steps and take Quentin’s face in his hands and _kiss him_. 

 

Hears Eliot say close against his mouth, “I love you. I was so stupid, Q, I’m so sorry.”

 

Quentin should know better than anyone that there’s not a switch you can flick to go back in time. Or, he guesses, there _was,_ but it’s gone. And he wouldn’t want to use it anyway, because they’re all one Eliot. He can’t lose this one without losing all of them, and he won’t do that. He wouldn’t trade any of them for the world. 

 

W

 

It’s raining--a steady inexorable drizzle--but Quentin goes out on the roof anyways, because it seems rude to cry in the house when Eliot’s emotional wounds are so much bigger than his. Sitting in the rain shivering just makes him feel like an idiot, though, so he turns around to cry in the attic, which feels more practical and more pathetic at the same time, somehow. Oh, well. Title of Quentin’s autobiography: _Practical and Pathetic._

 

Eliot finds him just when he’s hitting the really ugly portion of the jag. He pulls himself up off the ladder and stands at the other side of the attic, like he’s afraid coming closer will make it worse. “Q...”

 

“Sorry,” Quentin manages to say, sort of. “I’m just, um. Sorry.”

 

“Don’t apologize for crying. You know I don’t subscribe to traditional male stereotypes.”

 

“Sorry,” Quentin says. “Shit, I mean--“

 

He drops his head in his hands. Everything hurts, like the tears are trying to force their way out through all of his skin at once. Eliot hasn’t touched him--really _touched_ him--since that night they stayed awake together, and he feels like he’s not really here. Like his soul is drifting further and further out into the mist, his body isn’t enough to tether it anymore, at least not by itself. God, that sounds stupid. It _feels_ stupid.

 

Eliot looks away from him. “You can leave, you know,” he says. “You don’t have to stay with me.”

 

Quentin stops crying long enough to glare at him. “Come on, El. You know me better than that.”

 

“This is different,” Eliot says, without looking at him. “It’s hurting you, Q--“

 

“It would hurt me more not to be here.”

 

Eliot does look at him, then, something like hope in his eyes. “I’m saying it’s _okay_. You can go.”

 

“No. That’s--that doesn’t solve anything--“

 

“Q--“

 

“Look, what’s ‘hurting’ me is that _you’re_ hurting, El, and leaving isn’t going to make anything better. I just--I don’t know how to help, and it’s killing me, because I love you so much and all I want is for you to be happy again--“

 

“I’m--” Eliot says, strong enough for Quentin to fall quiet, and then stops and strides across the attic to him in four quick steps. He sits next to him and pulls him into a hug, and Quentin buries his face in his shoulder and can’t help crying harder than ever, because he smells the same and he feels the same, and he _is_ the same, he’s still Eliot, still the only fixed point in Quentin’s life and the most important thing ever. 

 

Eliot lets him cry for a long time, nose buried in his hair, arms wrapped tight around his shoulders. He murmurs nonsense-- _I’m here, it’s okay, no one’s leaving,_ and Quentin almost believes him.

 

Eventually, Quentin dries up and says, “Sorry,” again.

 

“No,” Eliot says. Quentin can feel the rumble of the word in his chest more than he can hear it, and the insular feeling of this--talking like this, curled together--soothes him more than hours of cathartic rooftop sobbing could’ve done in a million years. “No, I’m--God, Q, I’m the one who should be apologizing. Recovery is meant to be a team effort, isn’t it? And I’m making you do all the work.” 

 

“It’s okay,” Quentin says, but his voice is still watery. “I’m happy to do it.”

 

“You’re crying alone in the attic, Q.”

 

Point, but. “Not alone.”

 

“No. Not anymore, okay? You’re not going to do this alone any more. It’s my fucking trauma, I’m going to deal with it. Preferably head-on, and preferably quickly, because I hate seeing you like this.”

 

Quentin pulls his head away from Eliot’s chest. Eliot’s eyes are red-ringed, but there’s a metallic undercurrent of determination that hasn’t been there in a while, that Quentin recognizes from every battle they’ve ever fought, every battle they’ve won. “I don’t want to pressure you,” he says. “All the time you need--“

 

“I’m done with time,” Eliot cuts him off. “I’m done with limbo, I want to get back to the rest of our lives.”

 

“Okay,” Quentin says. “Whatever you want, El. Whatever you need.”

 

Eliot’s eyes go soft. He raises a hand to the side of Quentin’s face, and Quentin can’t help leaning into it, leaning into the cradle of his palm. Eliot pulls him in and kisses him. It feels different, somehow, from every other time Eliot has kissed him, like maybe this is the beginning of a new chapter in their life together. And fuck, that’s cliché, but this isn’t the same Eliot that yelled _good! get the fuck out!_ , this is a new Eliot.

 

But it’s the same man. It’s the same man Quentin’s loved for a lifetime, the only good choice Quentin ever made. So he presses closer and climbs into his lap and tries to kiss like a declaration.

 

W

 

Come dawn, they get in the rowboat.

 

They spend the night saying goodbye to their pocket world. Goodbye to the suspension of reality, goodbye to the lack of problems, goodbye to the sanctuary of solitude. Goodbye to the quiet, goodbye to the gloom, goodbye to the library and the kitchen and the cabinet full of empty bottles. Goodbye to the expanse of clean sheets between them, goodbye to the roof and the porch and seven months’ worth of walking on eggshells.

 

Eliot uses his tongue to make Quentin scream, and then Quentin sits up in bed doing card tricks until Eliot calls him a dork and pulls him down for a kiss. Quentin cries some more and re-learns what Eliot’s smile feels like against his skin when it’s real. Eliot goes to the bathroom and doesn’t come back and Quentin puts pants on and finds him staring at himself in the mirror, pale and shaking--like he’s seen a ghost--and when Quentin presses a kiss to his bare shoulder and pulls him into a hug, Eliot doesn’t snap at him, doesn’t push him away. He leans into it.

 

Breakfast is vodka provided by the cabin, but Quentin figures it can’t hurt. After all, he’s in need of some liquid fortification himself--the thought of going back to the real world isn’t _all_ great.

 

Eliot must see the dread on his face. “Courage, dear heart,” he says.

 

Quentin smiles, shakes his head, and joins him in the boat.

 


End file.
